Music

Hologram K-pop concerts are a big thing in South Korea right now

SINGAPORE — The performers may be virtual, but to the teenagers flocking to K-pop hologram concerts every day in Seoul, the experience of getting up close to their favourite stars is very real.

There are four competing theatres in Seoul dedicated to showing virtual live concerts. Across several time slots each day, life-size versions of K-pop acts are beamed onto a stage, lights pulsating and music thumping to create the illusion of being at a real concert.

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It goes beyond Seoul: South Korean singer Jaejoong's hologram concert filled a theatre in Tokyo with 10,500 fans last week. Now, this experience is headed to a theatre in Singapore.

To the rest of the world, hologram shows are a curious fad that have enjoyed the odd spark of interest in recent years — perhaps most notably with Tupac's ghost at Coachella in 2012. Michael Jackson was similarly resurrected in 2014 at the Billboard Music Awards.

The gimmick worked on these two occasions because it brought back two performers from the grave. But why settle for a hologram concert when the singers projected are very much alive?

The likeness of Tupac Shakur onstage in 2012.

Image: Christopher Polk/Getty Images

Showtime availability and ticket price are two compelling reasons, said Sean Park, chief creative officer at Korean firm Holotive, which created the hologram technology for the two-storey K-Live hall in downtown Seoul.

With shows running up to seven times a day and priced at about 37,000 Won ($30) per ticket, a virtual show is far more accessible than a live concert, which can cost 10 times more and sell out quickly, Park told Mashable during a visit to Singapore.

In K-pop-crazed South Korea, it seems this is enough to persuade teens to come to a virtual show.

K-Live is owned by Korea's largest phone company, KT Corporation, and competes with other bigwigs like media giant S.M. Entertainment, for exclusive rights to artists and content for the shows.

Right now, G-Dragon and Psy are playing at K-Live's Dongdaemun venue in Seoul, and S.M. won't have access to these, according to Park.

Bringing the show to Singapore

As K-pop mania spreads around the region, K-Live is so confident of virtual concerts that it's opening a new venue in Singapore at the Resorts World Sentosa complex.

Compared with the Seoul venue that can hold about 350 people, the Singapore hall is diminutive, much like a standing-only mosh pit ready for about 100 jumping teens. Park, who is overseeing the creation of the theatre here, said the Singapore venue will have a moveable stage — a feature not found in any other theatre.

The new stage can be raised up to accommodate live dancers. After the dancers exit, the stage descends, and a 12-meter-wide holographic film is tilted to a 45-degree angle, which reflects the projection midway onto the stage, making it seem like the artists are standing on it.

In my experience, the show wasn't as true-to-life as I had hoped. I thought it might have looked a lot more 3D by the sound of it, but it looked more like a high-quality video of the boyband hovering in the middle of the stage.

The video of the group isn't 3D anyway — it's a 2D video shot on high-end 4K cameras. This gets more noticeable if you move across one side of the stage to the other because the viewing angle doesn't change accordingly.

But several minutes into the performance, I could see how it would be easy to get immersed in the moment, all the same.

Additionally, because the artists are virtual, you can do a couple of cool effects that you couldn't with human performers. At one point, a dancer on stage dissolved in a puff of butterflies.

As K-Live prepares to open its doors to Singaporeans in two weeks, it remains to be seen if smoke and mirrors — literally — will be enough for audiences here.

For the legions of K-pop fans in Asia, it'll be yet another venue to stoke the craze.

Mashable
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